A Hardin County jury has found Christian “Kit” Martin guilty on all charges in the Pembroke triple murder case with the sentencing phase of the trial scheduled to begin Thursday.
Martin was charged with the November 2015 murders of Calvin and Pamela Phillips and their neighbor Ed Dansereau in Pembroke. Calvin Phillips was found shot in his home, while Pamela Phillips and Dansereau were discovered several hours later a few miles away in the burned remains of a car.
The 8-man, 4-woman jury needed nearly seven-and-a-half hours of deliberation before returning to the courtroom with their verdict. Once they were seated, Christian County Chief Circuit Judge John Atkins asked the foreperson to confirm the guilty verdicts.
The jury also found Martin guilty of three counts of tampering with physical evidence, and two counts each of burglary and arson.
Martin appeared stunned when the guilty verdicts were read and was seen shaking his head as he was escorted out of the courtroom by the bailiffs. When the jury was released from the courtroom, several of Martin’s family did not stand.
Closing arguments were heard Wednesday morning. Defense attorney Tom Griffiths said two main pieces of evidence in the case – a shell casing and a military dog tag purported to be Martin’s — was an amateurish effort to frame his client. Both pieces of evidence were found by family members of Calvin Phillips and later turned over to investigators.
Meanwhile, Assistant Attorney General Barbara Whaley laid out a timeline that showed inactivity on Martin’s cell phone at three key times during the day of November 18, 2015. Whaley said those times were when the murders were committed and the bodies moved and burned.
The murder charges carry a minimum sentence of 20 years on each charge and a maximum of life without parole. The same Hardin County jury will decide Martin’s sentence after the penalty phase of the trial scheduled to begin Thursday morning in Elizabethtown where the case was moved due to pretrial publicity in the Christian County area.